Star Trek: Deep Space Nine’s Most Irrelevant Episode Is Also Its Best

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine regularly tops the list of the best series in the franchise for a number of reasons. The series has some of the most complex characters in all of Star Trek, starting with Captain Benjamin Sisko, played by the inimitable Avery Brooks. It has a unique theme and setting, not only taking place on a space station instead of a ship but also exploring religion and culture clashes. But perhaps most importantly of all, DS9 features the Dominion War, a threat to the entire Alpha Quadrant that forced Trek to break out of episodic television and tell an ongoing story that spanned across not just episodes but seasons.

So it’s no surprise that one of the best episodes of the series takes place in the seventh and final season, at the height of the Dominion War. What is surprising, however, is that the episode has next to nothing to do with the Dominion War at all. Instead “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” is all about Sisko and his crew playing a game of baseball, illustrating in the process everything great about the best Star Trek show.

From his very first appearance in the DS9 premiere “Emissary,” Sisko established himself as a different type of Star Trek character. Starfleet appointed the captain to lead the station Deep Space Nine right as he planned to leave the organization and focus on raising his son, Jake, after the death of his wife. The cause of his wife’s passing? The Battle of Wolf 359, the infamous Borg attack on Starfleet forces orchestrated by Jean-Luc Picard when he was transformed into Locutus of Borg.

No sooner does Sisko accept the assignment than a wormhole opens up outside the station and he’s summoned by the aliens living inside of it. To the Bajoran people, who had been recently freed from the oppressive Cardassians, the aliens in the wormholes are Prophets, the center of their religion. By being contacted by the Prophets, Sisko has become the Emissary, an important figure in their religion. Complicating things further is the fact that the wormhole eventually is revealed to connect to the Gamma Quadrant, which has been conquered by the warlike Dominion. Now that the wormhole leads to the Alpha Quadrant, Sisko must rally everyone—not just Starfleet but also the Klingon Empire and the Romulan Star Empire—into a force to repel the invaders.

Yet, throughout those heightened stakes, Sisko maintained his attention on what he loved: his son Jake, of course, his difficult but loving father Joseph, his eventual second wife Kassidy Yates, and baseball. So when the starship USS T’Kumbra docs on DS9 and its Captain Solok, an old rival from the Academy, starts talking smack about baseball, Sisko cannot help but stop everything and challenge the haughty Vulcan.

Take away the fact that half of the players are aliens and that the whole thing takes place on a holographic projection in a part of a space station, and “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” could play like a sitcom episode. Sisko wants to win at all costs and initially micromanages his subordinates to the point that they’re ready to walk out on him. But he eventually realizes that they need to band together and gets himself tossed from the game for arguing with the umpire (security chief Odo, of course). In the end, Sisko even learns to trust bumbling Rom, who winds up with a heroic moment via his well-timed bunt.

After the game, the team all convenes in Quark’s bar to celebrate their moral victory, despite the 10-1 loss on the scoreboard. The party confounds Solok, and it is illogical, even to viewers: why in the world are we pausing the epic story for a baseball game? Why does a guy as complex as Sisko have to learn such a trite lesson? What is this feel-good nonsense in the middle of a war?

Yet the answer is right in front of both Solok and the viewers. The baseball game represents everything that Starfleet and its allies are fighting for. As befitting their name, the Dominion wants to control every aspect of its subjects’ lives, turning them into an indistinct mass. The United Federation of Planets represents humanity at its best, having set aside its differences and pursuit of power, giving space for people to follow their muses.

So when Sisko leads his people in a game of baseball, he’s actually doing an act of resistance. He’s showing the Dominion and its Cardassian allies (and his own allies in the Vulcans) why they have to fight back, why they can’t give up, even when the war seems unwinnable, even when Starfleet violates its own principles with Section 31. They have to persist so that people can have the freedom to be themselves, to enjoy their lives, and to play a game of baseball.